Major social reforms affect the extent to which social rights are granted widely and equally or selectively and in a manner re-enforcing social stratification. Thus, they affect the amount of institutionally sanctioned inequality in a welfare state. This paper seeks to explain the politics of making decisions about unequal social rights. It emphasizes the importance of studying the substantive contents of the policy changes that are on the reform agenda; the kind of actors involved in reform controversies; and the kind of demands they raise. Which actors involved prevail in these controversies, however, is a function of the dynamic of political competition at the time of legislative decision-making. That dynamic tends to be centrifugal; it empowers groups at strategic positions in the political constellation. The paper develops analytical categories for capturing both typological distinctions of substantive policy contents and the empowering dynamic. It demonstrates the significance of this model by analyzing four instances of major welfare reform in Germany.

The literature on risk regulation often assumes a direct link between public pressure and regulatory responses. This article investigates whether the direction of regulatory response is related to public argumentation as expressed in the national print media. Three approaches are explored: national policy patterns, political panics expressed in Pavlovian politics, and policy responses shaped by universal policy paradigms. It assesses these three approaches in comparative perspective by looking at scandals in food safety regulation in Denmark, Germany and the US, looking at argumentation patterns in the national print media and using a coding system derived from grid-group cultural theory and regulatory responses. While all three countries display mostly hierarchical argumentation patterns, their actual regulatory responses point to diverse patterns.

Interest in participatory governance recognises that communities can make valuable contributions to governance, but attempts to strengthen community participation encounter obstacles theorised as failures or incompleteness of participatory governance. This paper offers an alternative approach, drawing on ethnographic field data from a decade of work in rural Australian communities. It shows the nature of the community agency that is at the heart of policy interest in participation and how it differs from government efforts at community engagement. These insights suggest a need to rethink participatory governance, not as a single process with multiple participants, but as the juxtaposition of different ways of governing. Doing so opens up the possibility of governments and communities working together in new ways, with governments not only valuing what communities can contribute in theory, but also recognising how diverse communities work in practice.

Changes in the regulatory state, the privatization of network industries in Europe and in air transport have led to a redefinition of how airports are regulated. The French model of state ownership and regulation of airports became progressively out of step with a broader European market-oriented frame of reference. A new French sectoral frame of reference was developed and became public policy in 2005. A cognitive analysis identifies the key factors and actors responsible for this shift. This article explores the nature of the changes made to adapt the French model to a European framework and examines the influence of foreign models of regulation on the design of the French model. Finally, it suggests that features of the European frame of reference for regulatory structures have been adapted within France.

This paper examines the extent to which diffusion mechanisms have been important for the privatization of telecommunications in the OECD world. It analyzes a panel dataset for 18 OECD countries between 1980 and 2007 using spatial econometric techniques. The sample includes 18 OECD countries between 1980 and 2007. The empirical findings strongly suggest that spatial interdependencies are significant for privatization policies. First, closely related countries from a geographical or economic perspective influence each other to a greater extent than non-related countries. Second, there is no evidence that governments adopt policies of countries with a similar cultural background or the policies of those countries where privatization has been shown to lead to the intended economic results at the company level. Third, the importance of diffusion is highly influenced by national characteristics such the openness of the economy.